208 KIVER- ANGLING. 



be so masked by the trees or bushes as to allow of a much 

 nearer approach and shorter cast. In the Water of Leith 

 there are two pools a little way above the bridge, over- 

 shadowed by old trees, and much frequented by large 

 heavy trout. There I have been often more successful 

 than when my sweep was perfectly unencumbered ; and I 

 must be allowed to mention a curious circumstance which 

 happened to me some years ago in one of these said pools. 

 Having tied a cast rather hurriedly in the morning, I 

 hooked a good fish upon my bob, a mouse-body and snipe- 

 wing, when the single knot slipped. Two days after, when 

 fishing the same place, I again hooked and killed a fine 

 trout, upwards of a pound weight, and, to my astonish- 

 ment, my own handiwork with two inches of gut was 

 sticking in its lip. One of the fraternity, sedulously em- 

 ployed on the opposite bank, remarked, that " it must have 

 been an honest trout, for it was not for want of temptation 

 that he kept the hook for the right owner!" He also 

 related a fact of the same kind which had happened a week 

 or two before. A friend of his was fishing with minnow, 

 when the tackle caught in a tree behind, and, not being 

 able to reach it, he had broken the gut. Soon after, when 

 some one was shaking the tree, to secure the tackle, it 

 dropped off into the water, and, being slightly loaded with 

 lead, immediately sank. Next day an eel was taken at a 

 set line with a piece of gut hanging out of its mouth, and 

 the very person who had lost the tackle being on the spot, 

 it occurred to him that it might be his, which proved to be 

 the case. 



